India's food price inflation declines further to 9.42 per cent

Food price inflation in the country, which remained depressed since the second half of February 2011, declined further and stood at 9.42 per cent during the week ended 5 March 2011 from 9.52 per cent in the previous week.

Food price inflation in the country stood at 20.59 per cent during the comparable week of the previous year.

The decline in has been due to lower prices of chicken, mutton, fish and milk as also certain cereals and pulses during the week.

Food articles have a weight of 14.34 in the wholesale price index (WPI) of commodities while primary articles have a weight of 20.12, non-food articles a weight of 4.26 and fuel and power group a weight of 14.91.

Build-up of inflation for the `food articles' group so far during the current financial year (beginning 1 April 2010) was also lower at 8.76 per cent against 20.41 per cent in the similar period of the previous year.

The index for the 'food articles' group rose 0.2 per cent to 178.8 (provisional) from 178.4 (provisional) in the previous week due to higher prices of maize (up 8 per cent), fruits and vegetables and egg (up 2 per cent each) and urad, rice and condiments and spices (up 1 per cent each). However, the prices of poultry chicken (down 5 per cent), mutton (down 3 per cent), gram and fish-inland (down 2 per cent each) and milk, jowar, barley, fish-marine and masur (down 1 per cent each) declined.